Who exactly is a creative? What qualifies anyone to be called a creative? Are we all creatives or only those people who can make art should be called creatives?
There are different answers to these questions but what one thing is certain, we are all creative.
Being creative involves using problem-solving skills and thinking outside the box or the norm to bring about solutions.
Of course, there is a difference between being inherently creative and converting it to value, and in this case, I mean content. When value is being created with your creativity, I guess you can now be called A Creative. This creative work can be filmmaking, photography, all forms of writing (screenwriting, fiction et al.), comics, building software, music, social media management and so on.
In this article, I will be sharing some valuable tips that can help anyone who creates creative content grow their audience and continue adding value to them. These tips were gotten from one of our ‘Grow My Business Webinar’ series with Laju Iren, CCO of Laju Iren Publishing.
Create
Are you really a creative if you don’t create? You need to consistently create that value, be disciplined to find the time to create that painting, artwork, photograph, video, write that story, shoot that film, design that graphic you’ve had in your mind. You get the point, just CREATE! Yes, I’m shouting.
Connect
As a creative, you need to connect with your audience. You need to connect with them on the basis of your content; get them to know, like and trust you. Let your content be highly relatable.
Hone your skills
I don’t think this needs to be overemphasized! You need to keep growing your skills and your growth should be very visible to your audience. Invest in your personal growth and development, this way your audience will see that you are growing so that you can offer them more value.
Appreciate your community
Appreciate the people that you already have in your community. These are the people who are already showing up for you, it doesn’t matter if they are 10s, 100s or 1000s. Let them give you reviews, share those reviews and never be too familiar with them.
Talk about your product
Always talk about what you do at every opportunity you get to do so. Blow up your work. Make noise about what you do, the value you have added, the review people have and how helpful you have been to them. Never talk down on your content, you have to own your stuff. People will call you what you call yourself. Own your work and be proud of it. The responsibility of your personal brand lies on you, you are your personal cheerleader. You can even consider going partnerships and promotions for your creative content, feel free to do digital ads for your content.
Share free content or as we say, do a giveaway
Share free content that people will find very useful and relatable. Let that be a pulling factor for bringing more people into your community, that way they can know more about your work and the value you are creating. Your content should also be consistent, there should be a correlation between your free content and your paid content. With the free content, you can build your mailing list and gradually introduce them to your other works, both paid and free.
Feedback and reviews
Always seek feedback from your audience, let them tell you how much they loved your content. You should also share the feedback with your audience. In some ways, feedback helps you know the aspects of your gift or creativity you can monetize or do for free. Even when you do stuff for free, always seek feedback.
Tell stories about your story
You have your creative content which in some way is a story, however, you should tell a story about your story. The hows, whats and whys of your story. The behind the scene stories of your story are also important, this helps you to build a relationship with your audience. Let them know about the processes involved in getting them that content they love so much.
Mean Business
Let business be business, be serious and learn about the business side of your creative content. You need to know and be clear about what is to be paid for and what you want to give freely. Know how to price appropriately and make it easier for your customers to pay for your content. The Flutterwave Store has made life very easy for creatives and anyone who runs an online business. You can start selling and receiving payments from anywhere in the world through Flutterwave. You can learn more about the store and how to get started in this video.
Here is Laju Iren’s Flutterwave Store where she sells her books.
If you are a creative that freelances and would love to learn more about how you can get paid, check out this article we wrote about Flutterwave being the African Freelancer’s Best Friend.
We hope these valuable tips will help you build, grow and add value to your community.